‘Heated Rivalry’ Author on ‘Listening’ to Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams Film Their First Sex Scene, Wanting 12 Episodes for Season 2 and How the Show’s Success Is Helping Her Fight Parkinson’s
Canadian romance novelist Rachel Reid first saw Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams in person on the set of “Heated Rivalry,” Jacob Tierney’s television adaptation of her queer hockey book series “Game Changers.”
“They were filming the very first sex scene, their first hookup and it’s the longest sex scene on the show,” Reid tells me. “It was a closed set, so I was just sitting on a couch for four hours while they did that. I had headphones, so I could hear it and I had read the script, but I couldn’t see it. I was just listening. I was listening to them pretend to have sex for four hours, and I didn’t really know them, so that was weird.
“I do remember Hudson saying, ‘Should I keep my socks on?’” she continues. “I was nodding, but nobody could see me. I’m glad he did.”
“Heated Rivalry” stars Storrie as Russian hockey star Ilya Rozanov and Williams as his archrival Shane Hollander. The six-episode series follows the two men as they carry on a secret years-long affair before eventually falling in love.
The show became a runaway hit as soon as HBO Max, which acquired the series for U.S. distribution from Canadian streamer Crave, dropped the first two episodes over Thanksgiving weekend.
On set, Storrie tapped Reid on the shoulder to introduce himself. “He looked so much like Ilya and he speaks with a Russian accent all day while on set,” Reid recalls. “He was asking all these thoughtful questions about the character. I couldn’t even talk to him because it’s like I’m explaining Ilya to Ilya. It was very weird, but I could tell right away he was really smart and funny and charming. He’s so talented and fearless. I mean, introducing yourself to the author for the first time while doing a Russian accent is, I think, a fearless choice.”
She watched Williams film the moments before Shane and Ilya have their initial tryst in a hotel room. “He was turning the lamp on and off waiting for Ilya to come for the first hookup,” Reid says. “He had no lines, but I was like, ‘Oh, that’s Shane.’”
In just over a month, Storrie and Williams have become household names, the series has been greenlit for a second season and several of Reid’s novels have become New York Times bestsellers.
“I’ve been asked to speak at the University of Cambridge,” Reid says. “I write hockey smut. I’m not Kurt Vonnegut. They were like, ‘We’ve had Robert De Niro and the Dalai Lama.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, and me — I fit right in there.’”
I caught up with Reid over Zoom from her home in Nova Scotia. “I’ll warn you, I think I’m still in shock,” she says. “I don’t know if I could speak coherently about any of this, but I’ll try.”
When you initially talked to Jacob, was there any discussion of you having any sort of creative control or a say in what he does?
The first conversation I had with him, I could tell he understood the characters so well and the story so well. He laid out his whole vision for the show, and that really is exactly what everybody just watched. That’s how he described it to me. He wanted that Scott and Kip episode. We talked about what we were going to have to do to make sure we got everything right, how the sex was going to have to be an important part of the show and it was going to have to be explicit. He wouldn’t do it if he couldn’t do that. As soon as we had that first conversation, I was like, “You know what? He knows exactly what he’s doing. I’m not even worried about it.” I wasn’t really pushy at all. He just wanted me to read the scripts and I was really excited to do that. Obviously, he was very capable of doing this without my help, but he still included me. They [Tierney, Williams and Storrie] continued throughout all of the media and everything mentioning me and the books. I really appreciate that because I don’t think a lot of authors get that.
Which casting did you know about first?
Connor was first. I didn’t even hear about another possibility for Ilya. If there was one, I didn’t know about it. I know that Jacob was very excited about Connor. But it was a thing where we said that he pretty much has to be actually Russian because if he’s not, it’s going to be so distracting. People will be able to tell. The whole thing falls apart if he’s not believably Russian. So when he told me, “Well, he’s American and does not have Russian heritage, but he’s really good,” I was like, “Well, OK, if you say so.” I think it took a little longer to find Hudson, but as soon as they did their chemistry read, Jacob was very excited about it. I can’t even imagine what other actors would’ve been like.
When you saw Connor and Hudson, did they look like what you were imagining when you were writing Ilya and Shane?
At first, not quite, because I was just looking at still images of them [on Instagram]. Hudson had a lot of pictures where he looked like a badass and he was smoking or showing off all of his tattoos. I was like, “I’m not seeing it.” But then as soon as I met them on set, I was like, “Yep, they’re actually perfect.”
Writing is such a solitary profession. What is it like going from being by yourself writing to now having all these eyes and attention on you?
It’s overwhelming. Authors don’t want to be looked at. It’s not a natural thing. I used to be in a rock band, and that’s an art that you make where you get your audience feedback right away live and you can feed off of it. But writing, even if it’s big and popular and you know a lot of people are reading it, you don’t know about it. You don’t get that feedback really until something like this happens. And then suddenly it’s like, “Oh, I can actually get mobbed sometimes.” People are just very excited to meet me in a way that kind of confuses me, but I’m trying to get used to it.
Have you spoken to Jacob about what you’d like to see in Season 2?
I think we’re on the same page about it. Obviously, the focus has to stay on Ilya and Shane. We’re not going to do Season 2 and it’s a totally different couple. It wouldn’t be very popular. Not that we weren’t expecting it, but I think we’re all surprised at how popular Scott and Kip were. So now it’s, “OK, how do you get more Scott and Kip?” I think it’s going to be mostly “The Long Game.” Jacob’s already said that in interviews, but there’s another book “Role Model” that kind of overlaps it. So I’m hoping that we’ll get both stories told at the same time. I don’t think there’s another way you could do it. I’m hoping we get more episodes.
How many episodes do you want?
I’d go as high as 12, but maybe if it was just eight or 10, that would be nice.
Brendan Brady, Jacob Tierney, Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova, Dylan Walsh, Hudson Williams, Connor Storrie, Christina Chang and Rachel Reid attend the premiere of “Heated Rivalry” at TIFF Lightbox on November 24, 2025 in Toronto, Ontario.
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Do you have a group of gay friends who you have ask you to read your writing, specifically the sex scenes, to make sure they’re realistic?
I don’t send them writing. Actually, I realized when the show came out that a lot of my gay male friends have never read my books because they’re all obsessed with the show and they were all on their edge of their seats. They couldn’t believe things that were happening. I was like, “So you’ve not read the books?” I have discussions with them. I don’t like showing anybody my writing until it’s done. My husband is somebody that I can send them to because he is bisexual and does know what it’s like to have sex with men. So that’s somebody I can bounce things off of. But mostly I just talk to people and get information that way.
Will there ever be a “Heated Rivalry” Broadway musical?
I hope so, because I still hold the stage rights to that. It was the thing that when I signed the contract, I was like, “Yeah, that’ll never happen.” But now I’m like, “Maybe.” We’re talking about all sorts of things right now. I was saying to Hudson a couple weeks ago that it feels like we could do literally anything. It just seems like we have too much power and we also have the power to destroy ourselves very easily. We could take it all down with one bad post, one bad tweet. We could destroy the whole show and everybody’s lives. I was just like, “This is too much power.”
You have talked about being diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the same time Jacob approached you about the television adaptation. How is your health today?
It’s making it hard to write because I can barely control a mouse. I can’t type for very long. It’s hard for me to sit in a chair for very long. I need to figure out new ways to write. I don’t know if that will be voice to text. I don’t know if I can write that way. It doesn’t feel natural, but I need to figure out something because it is taking me a very long time to write now. But an amazing thing that’s come out of this though is Jacob was on CNN a few weeks ago. For whatever reason, the interviewer asked him about my Parkinson’s diagnosis. I thought it was kind of odd, but then the next day, one of the top Parkinson’s experts in the world reached out to me and asked if he could help me. I’ve never gotten to talk to a Parkinson’s expert. I’ve been on a five-year waiting list here because I live in a very small place. Now he’s found me a Parkinson’s expert, a neurologist, and I have an appointment in a couple weeks. That could change things for me because I’m not really getting the treatment that I should be getting. He also told me how to change my medication so I can sleep because I never slept. That change made me sleep through the night, which really helps with writing.
